Yes, Joe Biden Is Not Down and Out Just Yet: Just about every president, at one point or another, has been called “underestimated” by their supporters.
That was said about Ronald Reagan, and later about George H.W. Bush. It was said about Bill Clinton and about George W. Bush, although he once misstated the term as “misunderestimated.”It was said about Barack Obama, and about Donald Trump (including by Barack Obama.)
Now, it’s being alleged that the current president, Joe Biden, is being underestimated, by both friends and foes, as he reaches the halfway point of his term.
Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host, said that on television this week. He pointed out that Joe Biden, within a great deal of mockery, managed to pass a pretty comprehensive body of legislation in his first two years in office, some of it passed in a bipartisan fashion.
“It’s been a remarkable two years,” Scarborough said. “And it’s not really talked about that much on TV, but the truth is that so many in Obama World underestimated Joe Biden. So many in Clinton World underestimated Joe Biden. So many people close to those former presidents and secretaries of state, so many people close to them would whisper ‘Joe Biden will not be a good president.’
“The progressive base constantly ridiculed him throughout the 2020 campaign, mocked him after Iowa, declared him dead after New Hampshire, said he would never survive. It was over, he was too old, he had lost too many steps, and he was going to be sent packing back to Delaware.”
And even after Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries and the presidency, Scarborough noted that he came into office under terrible circumstances following riots and the pandemic.
“Everybody said, the nation is too divided, we’re not going to get things done. The conservative media world continued — like Trump World and like Donald Trump himself — they kept underestimating him.”
Scarborough noted that his commentary was “not a paid political advertisement for Joe Biden,” but that it’s how he sees it.
“This guy, constantly underestimated by his political foes and enemies alike, has been the most successful president in pushing through legislation than any president since, I guess, Ronald Reagan. You’d maybe have to go back to LBJ.”
He noted that Biden’s party did much better than expected in the 2022 race and cited former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as stating that the strategy of calling Joe Biden slow and senile wasn’t working.
“While we’re laughing at him, he beats us. While we’re mocking him, he routs us,” Scarborough said, paraphrasing Gingrich.
Scarborough, while a host on MSNBC for the last decade and a half, was a former Republican Congressman from Florida back in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Joe Biden is expected to announce, in February or March, that he is running for re-election in 2024, joining his predecessor, Trump, as the only candidates in the race. However, more are expected to jump in this spring. At 80 yegagears old, he is already the oldest president in history, and Trump was the oldest before him.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of Biden’s approval rating, he hit 44.1 percent on January 10, the highest that number has been since last October. The site attributed that improvement, in part, to the easing up of inflation in recent months. It did suggest, however, that the burgeoning documents scandal could make a dent in the president’s popularity, especially if the story has legs.
“The discovery of a handful of classified documents from the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s Delaware home has generated arguably the first bad news story for Biden in months, and it’s fair to wonder whether it will reverse — or at least halt — his miniature political comeback,” FiveThirtyEight said of that issue, which the site said most voters are aware of. “The few polls that have been conducted since these revelations suggest that Americans think Biden acted badly, and that could be dragging down his approval rating.”
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Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
